Poor Indians consider adding rat meat to their menus

Things have gone from bad to worse in India, life for the poor has gone downhill, while life for the wealthy has gone over the moon.

Mega rich Indians are now looting land from the poor and selling it at mega prices to the newcomers to India. The IMF has given India a $75 Billion credit line to hang themselves with their very own snake rope......and the poor are considering to eating Rat Meat......when in fact, Rat Meat is considered a delicacy in other countries, but the Rat is worshiped in India.

With food prices rising, one of India's poorest states is considering adding rat meat to the menus of state-run canteens, a move officials in Bihar say could help provide cheap protein for the state's 80 million people, most of whom live off the land as poor sharecroppers or subsistence farmers.

"People in different parts of the world eat lizards and dogs. Why not rats?" the state's tribal welfare minister, Jeetan Ram Manjhi, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

While the suggestion - there are no firm plans to start marketing rat meat just yet - may seem repulsive to many inside and outside India, eating rats is not unheard of in Bihar. Read Article

That $75 billion is going to be the new world order equiv. to being under the British Raj rule.

For the love of all thats good, what on earth possessed the Indians to sign up to the snake oil sales mans schemes?

Its always the bloody poor that suffer whilst the rich just get richer and more aloof every day.

reply to post by Dan Tanna


just like the other scams that the IMF have pulled in various countries, India seems to be the next victim. Yes, you are correct about the Indian Raj, they are still intact in India, like Mittal, Tata and the Snake Charmers.

It is the ordinary people that will have to pay for this mess

India has always been a land of extremes.

The gulf between the rich and poor has grown since independance.

It seems like it's going to continue to do so.

Since the vast majority are poor, it really has to be time for revolts to seriously be happening all over this world in huge numbers, and they don't back down until the cartel and their henchmen are completely gone. Massive strike! Complete non-cooperation with the state or anyone in huge numbers. We need it here as well.

From the mouth of a brother of the holy cross in the 70's that taught me in HS. 'You would be surprised what you would eat if hungry enough.' He did a four year tour in Africa.

I am an Indian and I see everyday the hardships that poor people face it bring tears to the eyes and the hardship has just gone to the next level.

I overheard a conversation once regarding this by two anesthesioligists. One Indian, one who was visiting. The visitor commented on the horrific disparity of staying at a five star hotel and watching the down cast foraging for food in the dumpster. The Indian refuted saying 'they breed like rabbits!' Things that make you go hmmm.

This may sound rotten but...

Eating rats is not new in India (or Pakistan and several other countries). Most paddy fields (rice) would be infested with rats were it not for a cast that eat rats. At least, this was the case and likely still is true.

The point to remember is that sensationalism is easy to create when items from one culture, abhorrent to another, are reported to another. In one or more of the Asian countries people eat locusts, in a part of South America people eat bees, wasps and ants.

Eating rat meat doesn't sound nice to me but if I had to.. for survival then I would eat it. The only meat I would not eat is bovine and that's because I consider bovine to be diseased hence toxic.

reply to post by jpm1602



I met people like that, who really, really hated the poor.

[edit on 19-8-2008 by Dan Tanna]

The cast system in India is really messed up. I would expect more from such great and learned people. But let me not cast stones, look at america now. It is all relevant.

[edit on 8/19/2008 by jpm1602]

Originally posted by jpm1602
The cast system in India is really messed up. I would expect more from such great and learned people. But let me not cast stones, look at america now. It is all relevant.

[edit on 8/19/2008 by jpm1602]

If I remember rightly, cast is not set by parentage but by birth i.e you are born a particular cast not into a particular cast unlike the European class system under which one is born into a class. It's probably more complicated than explained to me many years ago, I'm sure another ATS member will give a better description of cast. There are still people who can tell a person's cast just by looking at the person.

I think it is a red dot thing. But what do I know. Next to nothing.

Is it religiously acceptable to eat any meat in that region? I've always found it confusing that countries with hunger problems have taboos against certain meat, whether it be swine in muslim countries or sacred cows in India.

As a quick aside I grew up in the Southern US, and have eaten squirrel and rabbit before. Some of my friends who grew up in other areas of this country find this totally abhorent.

Cats and chinese seem to have no problem with rat. Me...fish eyes and rat would be last on the menu.

Originally posted by jpm1602
Cats and chinese seem to have no problem with rat. Me...fish eyes and rat would be last on the menu.

Chinese have the reputation of eating everything include cats.
BTW don't worry about Indian, they have almighty freedom and democracy

Lol. I watched an olympics halftime of a reporter going downtown for a bite. Everything is roasted on a stick. Would take a pathologist a month to figure out what the hell the components were. And a gastroenterologist the same to find a cure.

[edit on 8/20/2008 by jpm1602]

Originally posted by gs001

Originally posted by jpm1602

BTW don't worry about Indian, they have almighty freedom and democracy

What good is freedom and democracy, when the stomach is constantly empty....this is an illusion to keep the poor in the zoo, intact as obedient animals.

They would be better off if they shrugged of their backward religious superstition against eating beef.

In this case religion serves to degrade them rather than elevate them.

Of course, this is is only the opinion of a Western raised, died in the wool, meatavore.